Bikie killer Joseph Gatt jailed for 21 years over murder of Comanchero Bassil Hijazi

A SYDNEY drug dealer who murdered a teenage Comanchero bikie and blamed his best friend will spend at least 21 years behind bars.

A Sydney drug dealer who murdered a teenage Comanchero bikie and blamed his best friend will spend at least 21 years behind bars.

Joseph Gatt killed 18-year-old Bassil Hijazi as he sat in a parked car in Bexley in July 2013.

Gatt, 28, was sentenced in the NSW Supreme Court on Friday to a maximum 28 years in prison with a non-parole period of 21 years.

Shot in his car... Bassil Hijazi.

CCTV released after Bassil Hijazi’s murder.

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Gatt gave no reaction as Justice Monika Schmidt condemned Mr Hijazi’s “cold- blooded execution” but could not rule on who fired the fatal shots. Gatt testified he wasn’t even carrying a firearm, and it was his friend George Borg who pulled the trigger in a cannabis deal gone wrong.

A jury in May found him guilty, but Justice Schmidt said exactly who unloaded a “hail of bullets” hitting Mr Hijazi twice fatally in the neck and chest can’t be proved.

Hijazi was shot dead as he sat in the back of a blue Mitsubishi Lancer. Picture: Bill Hearne

Crime scene photos tendered

during the NSW Supreme Court trial.

A man arrested in relation to the murder of Comanchero associate Bassil Hijazi.

Borg has already been sentenced after pleading guilty to murder. He received a discount for testifying against Gatt whom he blamed for the killing. But Justice Schmidt labelled that testimony unreliable.

“The evidence does not establish that Mr Gatt fired the fatal shots,” she said. The Crown argued the killing came after Mr Hijazi and Gatt got into a punch-up at a convenience store earlier that year.

Gatt had also told Borg that his van had been shot at by an associate of Mr Hijazi when he was at a McDonald’s with his girlfriend, the prosecution alleged. Mr Hijazi had survived being shot in the neck a fortnight earlier but refused to co-operate with officers trying to investigate, police said at the time. His mother made an impassioned plea after his murder for his killer to come forward and urged police to get guns off the streets.

“You’re not doing your job right. My son’s gone,” she said.